I shall call this day, THE MOTHER OF ALL F*CK UPS.

March 4, 2013

Yes, the 4th of March in the year of 2013 will now be renamed as that – at least for me. I swear! I think there was the word LOSER stamped on my forehead that I didn’t know about which gave all of the people I met today a reason to just ruin my day. Let me narrate my day to you:

0900hrs: I went for a ship inspection sponsored by Royal Caribbean Cruise which was currently docked in Dubai. I arrived at precisely 9am even if the inspection won’t start until about 9:30am as I was anticipating some unfortunate events like getting lost on the way to the cruise terminal or not being able to find the correct place right away. Well, I was anticipating some minor events but didn’t realize that this day has planned something else for me. To start off, there were no signage whatsoever about where to go for this inspection. The organizers didn’t update us as well of anything the day before so I presumed that it was well thought through and that everything will be ready when we arrive. I went inside the cruise terminal and saw a bunch of passengers waiting for the check-in counters to be open. So I was not THAT stupid to just stand there and wait for someone to approach me and ask me what the f*ck do I want and why I was there, so I asked around. The problem was, every single person that I’ve asked doesn’t have a clue about this particular training that I’m supposed to attend. Don’t get me wrong, they tried their very best to help me out – the staff of Royal Caribbean Cruise itself including the check-in counter supervisor. She even spoke to the organizer of this training on the phone to ask him where should I go however, the organizer was probably drunk or even drugged at the time as he could not give the correct information about the meeting place of this event. I was literally running around like a headless chicken and went as far as going inside the ship itself and was escorted out by two security guards like I’m some kind of a lunatic because apparently I’m not allowed to go that way. To make the long story short, at around 1030hrs I found the organizers and the rest of the people joining the training sitting comfortably at the check-in area – where I have been running around for an hour and a half. The organizer apologized and asked for me to sit down together with the others as some other people were lost and they’re all trying to locate them. So I sat down, furious. After some time, they told us that the training is about to begin. They all got up and I noticed that all of them were wearing an ID pass, which I don’t have!!!! So I had to do another round of running to go to the security post so they can issue an ID pass for me and I’ll be allowed to enter the ship. The ship itself was amazing though, I’ll blog about that on a later post.
1400hrs: So the training and the ship inspection ended at around 1330hrs. I went to our HR department which was located in the middle of nowhere to get some documents for my upcoming trip. I arrived at around 1400hrs and I waited until 1630hrs before I was told that the system was down since 1pm and they are unable to print or issue anything at the time. They asked me to come back tomorrow. Whaaaaaaatttttt thhhhhheeeeeeee fffffffffffff??????
2100hrs: The latest and the greatest – after my zumba class, I decided to buy an avocado shake at the nearby cafeteria from my building. At around 2130hrs, still without the avocado shake and after following it up for like the 3rd time I asked the cashier what’s taking so long to prepare a small avocado shake. (Were they harvesting the avocado from some other country???) The guy then told me: “Sorry madam, the juice was taken for delivery by mistake to another person. He’s coming now, wait 1 minute.” So they had me waiting for 30 minutes because my avocado shake was taken by mistake by the delivery guy and they were waiting for him to come back so they can give me that shake. I mean, how hard was it to do a new one? Will their business close down if they make a new avocado shake so I won’t be waiting until the delivery guy comes back? WAS THAT REALLY TOO MUCH TO ASK??????????????????

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[…] of the Seas cruise. As many of you know, the first part of it was not really a good experience (blog about that on here). However, let me just reiterate that it has nothing to do at all with the service of the Royal […]

Ugh! That is a terrible day. At least you will probably never have a worse March 4th in your life than that of 2013. I hope that you are now able to relax and hopefully, someday look back at is as an exercise in character building..Seriously, by the time you had the situation with the avocado shake you had already been through so much, that place was lucky you didn’t do anything criminal! Breathe deep and rest a bit Pinay. You deserve it!

I only read the last two sections, since you already told me about the ship story. I can’t believe they made you wait for two and a half hours before they told you that the system was down!
As for the avocado shake story, I’m not surprised. These kind of mix-ups are so common here. I went to get some stuff from a nearby mart and the guy who packed the groceries put some eggs in there that I didn’t buy…when I got home, I called them to check on my bottled water delivery and informed them about the egg box…when the guy delivered my water, he said that he was supposed to deliver the eggs to someone else, but put them in my bag by mistake 😀

I think I learned that the best thing to do is to keep following up and always assume that they have no idea what they are doing and that they are going to fu*ck things up. That way, you will be sure to get your service done properly.
Btw. How was the avocado shake? I actually felt like having a shake after zumba, but I got zaatar manaeesh instead 🙁